Category: Uncategorized

It seems that McCarthyism is controlling who gets jobs in California.

After Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching  the Protection of  Constitutional freedoms. However, the day before class was to begin, her employment was cancelled all because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to “defend” the U.S. and California constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

As a Quaker (non-violence) she objected to the loyalty as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom.

This method of detection was something that was used during the McCarthy witch hunts for communist, now it seems to be aimed at all walks of life.

Now it seems that although it is still is the land of the free, unless you’re willing to sign a loyalty oath, you won’t have the freedom to work anywhere you want.

Well it seems that its nearly official, Mugabe has lost the election! But it seems that the guy is not going to give up without further interference in the electoral system.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has leaked information that shows that  Morgan Tsvangirai won 47 per cent of the vote against President Mugabe’s 43 per cent, but it is conveniently below the required  50 per cent  needed for an outright victory. So 47+43 = 90.

I wonder where the other 10 per cent of votes have disappeared to, so as to reduce Morgan Tsvangirai ability to get past the 50 percent margin? Straight into the pockets of Mugabe’s party thugs who have acted a voting officials in some of the polling stations I wouldn’t wonder!

It seems that a last minute struggle is still to take place in Zimbabwe to finally get rid of Mugabe, unless of course he manages to rally his supporters and the military for one last grab at power.

Of course he could capitulate and run off to his hidden coffers of money and seek asylum in a friendly country. It will be interesting to see which one that will be (China, France, Switzerland) and clearly an indication of what outside help he has received to stay in power all this time.

What is going on in India?

It seems that the mother of  Scarlett Keeling has been told by the Goa Medical College and Hospital that she will have to pay a substantial repatriation fee to have her daughters illegally removed internal organs returned to her!

I wonder if this is a hospital fee or something more personal?

Clearly, India is now not a very pleasant place to die if as I suspect, many bodies are having their organs removed to be sold on their illegal pink market!

Someone in India is making money from the dead!

Another interesting motoring tax came to light this week, and thank goodness it won’t affect me.

My car is a 10 year old Vauxhall Omega Estate and luckily it will escape the newly announced tax increases for cars with high carbon dioxide emissions.

Last time I looked, my car was worth around £750.00. It seems to pass its MOT every year with little fuss and with 150,000 miles on the clock and only standard excise tax to pay, it seems that I’ve still got a bargain car. It may even go up in value!

Like many people this morning I woke up to the news that our ever so open Labour Government have been secretly building 150 Bail Hostels across England – of course they would never dare build them in their Scottish heartland!

The Bail Hostels are to be run by private company ClearSprings Management Ltd,  under an outsourcing contract.

A list of potential locations can be found here, but its only a list of counties and cities, not exact geographic locations so we still don’t know how close one is to where we all actually live! So how do we find this out?

I know that these facilities need to be built and many Nimby‘s will be dead set against them, but I think by conducting the whole project in secret is only going to make matters worse.

More info on this subject…

• Hostels in Burnley and Nelson

• Western Super Mare is to get one

• Another report

  Technorati Tags: Government Spending, Secrecy, Hostels

As we continue to wait for the announcement of the Zimbabwe electoral commission that the MDC have won the election, Australia has announced that it is supporting calls for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.

It’s good that countries are now facing up to their responsibilities to help Zimbabwe get back on track. I wonder if China will join in?

At the same time it seems that Barclays bank may have been caught with its finger in Mugabe’s regime coffers, apparently its been aiding the finances of Mugabe family members for many years. Seems that there’s no ethics when high finance comes into play.

If they have been doing this, there must be some government legislation that can be used to punish them for this.

With just four days to go to the local elections, the Joseph Rowntree Trust has issued a report that asks many questions about the security of the UK postal voting system – more info here.

Many cases over the years have made the headlines about Electoral fraud, one case in Birmingham in 2005 showed that over 1,500 votes had been involved in postal fraud.

The judge at the subsequent trial said there was evidence of “massive, systematic and organised fraud” and that the campaign had made a mockery of the election. No one has been charged over this fraud!

In another case in Slough, Eshaq Khan was elected using fraudulent votes, subsequently four men have now been arrested and await charging with electoral fraud.

The UK Electoral Commission has repeatedly demanded tough laws to stamp out votes rigging and the even the Council of Europe has said that British elections had become “childishly simple” to rig – how embarrassing!.

I wonder if my postal vote is safe and will it count in the final tally? It seems that the UK has a lot to do before it can claim to have a more secure postal electoral voting system that some of the Third-World countries that it chooses to criticise.

In a previous post I found out that our personal data was been given to overseas governments for investigation under a special ‘degree’ by Jackie Smith the Home Secretary.

I thought that  I would see if I could find out how many of these incidents had occurred in the past by submitting a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Home Office via My Society’s  What Do They Know FOI web site.

My question…

Dear Sir or Madam,
With reference to all the current legislation and special certificates in force please tell me how many instances there have been where an individuals personal identification information/data has been exported to any world-wide security/law enforcement agencies for review by their staff.

The reply? A refusal notice using the £600.00 expenses excuse. See the detailed response below.

I have come across the £600.00 rule before when the FOI first came out. But have not had it used in a reply to one of my FOI requests before.

What next, well I refine the question and send a copy of this to my MP – John Redwood using another of My Society’s web sites – Write To Them. Perhaps he might be able to find out more.

Stay tuned for more updates in a few days.

One the many interesting facts that I can come across when reading some of the articles written so far in the Ineos/Unite dispute is that Ineos manufactures most of the UK’s supply of Chlorine. It also appears that if anything happened to the Ineos Runcorn plant where the Chlorine is made, the UK would run out of safe drinking water in 3 days!

I find it quite disturbing that the UK is again dependant on one single supplier of chlorine and to me is another good example of how successive UK  governments have let the infrastructure of UK disintegrate to the state it’s in today. I’m not saying that everything should be nationalised, but certain major UK infrastructures need to be in Public Ownership.

I don’t think that there is any major UK infrastructure, such as Electric, Water, Transport etc.  that remains in public ownership. What a shambles.

Humphrey Lyttelton has died aged 86!

What a great loss! I’ve managed to see him and Cleo Lane a number of time over the years at various concerts the last being at the Anvil in Basingstoke the year before last.

I shall miss his voice on I haven’t a clue and his other radio programs that that he made. I’ll have to get his CD’s out tomorrow and reminisce.